WE HAVE TAKEN DOWN THIS SITE WHILE WE PERFORM SOME MAINTENANCE.
WE'LL BE BACK SOON SO PLEASE BE PATIENT!
Frequently asked questions
Q) What do you class as "maintenance"?
A) Anything that requires us to take down the sites in order to perform an operation for the benefit of the sites. We use maintenance mode most often when our database cluster has been knocked out of sync or has become uncontrollably overloaded. By putting the site in to maintenance mode it gives the database cluster time to catch up; in maintenance mode it typically only takes 5 minutes to get things back in to order when, left to its own devices, it might have taken hours.
Q) Why do you perform "maintenance" at the worst possible time?
A) Often because we have to, and because 5 minutes of maintenance mode is better than 3 hours of down-time without maintenance mode.
Q) When will the site be back up?
A) As soon as possible! You do not need to contact us telling us the site is down. We know, because we're the ones who put it down!
Q) This problem has been happening for days/weeks/months/years/decades now, when are you going to fix it?
A) Believe us, we know. All our time and effort is going in to fixing it. You're annoyed, we're annoyed. We're all annoyed. If you'd actually like to know the reasons behind it all, what's going on and what we're doing to try and fix the issue then your best source of information is the site news. Robin writes regularly and extensively on what's going.